


phantom pains and deadly chains

by hystericalcherries



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 01:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12097854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hystericalcherries/pseuds/hystericalcherries
Summary: Do you remember what it felt like?they ask, wanting to know the answer without really knowing the question.Dying?





	phantom pains and deadly chains

**Author's Note:**

> A little drabble for our favorite ghost boy. May he die in peace.

He never tells them.

When they ask, he just laughs. He laughs because that’s the only thing he can do. Laugh and laugh and laugh, nervous tension strumming in every syllable. He laughs and says it was so long ago and  _how am I supposed to keep track of all the times I almost died?_  

And that doesn’t count as lying, right? In all honesty, it  _was_  a long time ago and he has been almost murdered so many times by so many people that it’d be a waste to even count. He isn’t lying. He isn’t.

 _Danny,_  they say even as they laugh with him. But theirs is a different kind of laughter, a laughter that loosens the mind and eases the lungs.  _Be serious._

 _I am,_  he replies because out of everything that has happened, this is the one thing he will not tell them. For he has taken these words and swallowed them whole. Swallowed them and taken a needle to his lips, sewing from corner to corner and tightening until he bled. A bow of cynical absolution finishes off the decision, double knotted for extra measure.

Because he remembers. He most definitely remembers

Every moment, every little detail, is engraved onto the back of his eyelids, highlighted by a sickly, green glow. They stalk him in his waking moments, pouncing when he least expects it.

It comes when he’s at school, an idle thought about walking out of class and throwing himself off the roof. It comes when he’s sitting by the fountain at the park, seeing his own corpse floating in the reflection of the water. It comes when Jazz hugs him, reminiscent of less gentler hands wrapping around his throat and squeezing until he breaks. It comes when his friends laugh too suddenly, blood dribbling down his chin when a bullet pierces the soft flesh of his stomach. It comes when his parents pat him on the back, electricity coursing through him and burning, burning,  _burning_. It comes when he’s staring in the mirror and the stranger there smiles while holding a bloody knife against pale skin.

It’s a cycle he’s bound to, chains wrapped around a cold heart.  _Rebirth, then death_  goes the song of the world. Rebirth and death. Rebirth and death, rebirth and death, and death and death and death. It always ends the same.

 _Do you remember what it felt like?_ they ask, wanting to know the answer without really knowing the question.  _Dying?_

 _No,_ he says and it’s a lie he’ll take to the grave.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk angst with me at my [tumblr](https://www.hystericalcherries.tumblr.com).


End file.
